2009 HTC Touch Cruise phone with Footprints launched

HTC has announced that it will launch its new communicator, the 2009 HTC Touch Cruise, by late 2009.

Photo: 2009 HTC Touch Cruise with Footprints geo-tagging

This new phone is an updated version of the HTC 2008 Touch Cruise model. The 2008 Touch Cruise was released as a GPS device, but the 2009 HTC Touch Cruise flaunts its sleek design and a caboodle of new features and application.

Although the 2008 HTC Touch Cruise was supposed to be the first touch phone emphasizing the navigation aspect of cell phones, it did not quite deliver. HTC has now come back, designing the HTC Touch Cruise phone as a navigation centric device.

The 2009 Touch Cruise model comes with a candy bar form factor and a 2.8 inch TFT with QVGA resolution.

The 2009 HTC Touch Cruise has a trademark scroll wheel in the center with an OK button. Avoiding a dedicated camera button, the 2009 HTC Touch Cruise has thin power and volume control keys.

The phone also comes in with an in-car navigation system. When connected with the associated car cradle the Cruise transforms itself into a user friendly, one-touch interface providing turn-by-turn directions.

The 2009 HTC Touch Cruise has a built-in 3.2 megapixel camera without frills. The camera lacks the autofocus feature. But what the 2009 HTC Touch Cruise does is that it comes up with an all new feature named Footprints. Footprints allows you to add textual and audio bookmarks to your pictures. In addition, Footprints allows you is to identify the postcard with its location via the GPS facility with specific geographical coordinates. This allows the user to trace their path back to that specific location with just a few touches.

“Just as we have seen GPS technology transform how people navigate to new places, we are now seeing location-based applications like HTC Footprints changing how we interact and carry our memories,” said Peter Chou, President and CEO, HTC Corporation.

Speculations on the web about the 2009 HTC Touch Cruise also being referred to as the “Iolite” or even T4242 has given the audience an impression that the phone comes with a VGA screen and a TouchFLO 3D user interface. Disappointingly these speculations are not true. The 2009 HTC Touch Cruise uses a QVGA screen which basically cannot make use of the sophisticated UI feature, hence the phone has to sail with TouchFLO 2D instead of TouchFLO 3d.

The processor that the 2009 HTC Touch Cruise uses, a Qualcomm MSM7225, isn’t very different from its predecessor. Its CPU clock rate remains the same (528 MHz). The 2009 HTC Touch Cruise comes with 256 Mb of RAM and 512 Mb of storage space. It also features a memory expansion slot for micro SD (SDHC) cards.

The phone as in all other communicators comes with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS connectivity option.

Technical specifications of the 2009 HTC Touch Cruisece

Class: communicator
Form-factor: candy-bar
Rivals: Glofiish X900
Materials: plastic (soft-touch), metal
Operating system: Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, TouchFLO 2D user interface
GSM 850/900/1800/1900 Mhz, EDGE/GPRS, UMTS/HSDPA 2100
CPU: 528 Mhz (Qualcomm MSM7225A platform)
ROM: 512 Mb
RAM: 256 Mb
Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (A2DP), proprietary ExtUSB (USB 2.0) for charger/data cable/headset, microSD memory card slot (with SDHC support
Display: TFT 2.8″ with QVGA resolution (320×240 pixels), capable of up to 65K colors
Camera: 3 MP with fixed focus
Navigation: Qualcomm’s gpsOne chipset (with A-GPS support)
Battery: removable 1100 mAh Li-Ion battery